Chapter 10
Dustin
“I’m not rattled,” I said immediately.
All three of them made the exact same face — the ‘we do not believe a single word out of your mouth’ look.
Noah folded his arms. “Then why do you stare at her like she kicked your puppy?”
What? “I don’t have a puppy.”
“Exactly,” Dante said. “Which means your face was even worse.”
I groaned. “Look, she just . . . she notices shit.”
“Like what?” Savannah asked.
I hesitated. Because saying it out loud showed them how much I was watching her.
Fuck it, they already thought I was rattled.
“Like . . . left-foot compensation. Breathing patterns. Why injured guys sit in the back during film. Why Whittaker wobbles on his bench reps. Stuff none of us pay attention to.”
Noah frowned. “She saw all that since she started?”
“She saw that today,” I snapped, and then felt like a jerk for doing it. “She pays attention,” I muttered.
Savannah’s eyes sharpened. “To you?”
“No,” I lied. “To everything. She sees stuff that—”
“That the coaches won’t want her paying attention to,” Savvy finished for me.
My jaw clenched. Hard.
“I still think it’s a good idea to talk to her,” Savvy said. She glanced at Dante, then turned to me. “What do you think, Dustin?”
Why was she asking me?
Because I was the one who kissed her, that’s why.
“I think we should stay the hell away from her,” I told them honestly.
“She’s digging, and after just two days, I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it.
I already warned her, but she threw it back in my face.
The further we are from her, the less likely it’ll blow up in our faces.
And it will blow up.” I looked between them all. “The girl is not subtle.”
“I’d really like to know what she posted that got my dad to take it down,” Savvy said quietly.
“We wanted to know before we realized she was going to be at the stadium,” Dante said thoughtfully.
“And now she’s on Sutherland’s radar,” I reminded him bluntly. “You two are on his radar. Let’s keep the things he isn’t happy about away from each other.”
“Yes, of course.” Savvy chewed her lip. “But if she’s asking questions . . .”
“Then we don’t need to be the ones answering them.” My tone was harder than it normally was with Savvy, but if Dante wasn’t reigning in his girl, someone had to.
Dante blew out a breath. “Dust is right. It’s not the right time.”
“But what if we say nothing and something happens?” Savvy asked quickly. “I don’t want her to make the mistake I did and assume you all knew what was happening. But at the same time, I want her to know what they’re doing. I just don’t want you guys to suffer.”
“We don’t want her in the stadium,” I said bluntly.
“The longer she’s there, the more involved we’ll become, because she’s going to find something, and because we know it’s shady.
One of us, him most likely—” I jerked my thumb at Dante — “is going to step forward and drag us—” I pointed at Noah and me — “into it. She’s been caught before, she’s barely hanging on, I don’t know how the fuck she got into the stadium, but I do know she won’t be there long.
She’s watching us, all of us. But the coaches are watching her.
Trust me. She thinks she’s here for a month, but she won’t be. ”
“Are you helping her on her way out?” Noah asked with a slight smile.
“I can hold a door open like any gentleman,” I told him with a grin. I looked over at Dante, who was frowning. “Dante, listen to me. You know I’m right.”
“I know, but—”
“There’s no but.” I held his look. “We talk to her, we expose ourselves.”
“Talking to her lets her know we know,” Noah agreed. “We’ve all seen her the last couple of days. Do we really want that kind of exposure?”
“No. We don’t.” I didn’t look away from Dante. “Not with her. She won’t see this as helping look out for her. She’ll see this as us knowing and doing nothing, instead of just being guilty by association. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me she’ll think we’re innocent.”
“So we do what? Watch her mess up?” Dante asked doubtfully.
“It’s her mess, not ours.” I looked between the three of them. “You want to blame someone for her being there, blame whoever gave her a pass into the building.”
Hadley was a problem, but not in the way I expected.
She was a sharp, relentless, inconvenient problem who asked the wrong questions, looked in the wrong corners, and didn’t know when to shut up — but I didn’t want her to get kicked out by a program we ourselves wanted to rebel against. But I also wasn’t willing to sacrifice any of us for her crusade.
It was Noah who surprised me with his doubts. “We don’t know how much she actually knows, but we do know what they do to people who bring attention to them. If she only knows half the story, how can we say we’re better than they are?”
I went to tell him it was easy, because we just had to pretend we didn’t know. It was what we agreed on. But in a way, he was right. Though I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Not after just laying out why we needed to stay away.
“We owe her nothing, man.” I met his look of surprise. “Tell me this, do you think she’s worrying that whatever she finds fucks up your chances at the Draft? Or mine? Or Dante’s?”
They all stared at me, my bluntness probably surprising them. I didn’t let them see too much. Didn’t let them know that even though I said the words, believed the words, for some reason I couldn’t explain, my pulse sped up every time she got too close.
“Dust—”
“We stay away,” I told Dante sharply. “I hooked up with her, I have the perfect excuse for why we’re keeping our distance.” I looked between them all. “We have enough to worry about. Hadley Peterson’s thirst for a story is her own problem to quench.”
“Are we sure? It doesn’t feel right.” Savvy gave Dante a hopeful look, which Noah and I didn’t miss.
“We’re sure,” I answered for Dante. “We’re careful about what we say when she’s around. She wants to hang herself with her own carelessness, we’ll sit back and watch her swing.”
“Brutal,” Noah grunted.
“Survival of the fittest,” I countered. “It’s not a new concept to anyone in this room.”
We shared a look, and I knew they both agreed with me. Savvy didn’t, but she was Dante’s problem, not mine.
And Hadley? Well, she wasn’t my problem either. I’d warned her to be careful, but she wasn’t. She’d make her own bed, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be lying down in it with her.
* * *
Dante had stayed with Savvy, Noah needed to do a paper, and his little brother was impatiently waiting to help, and I . . . well, I had nothing to do.
There was always something to do, or someone, but I wasn’t in the mood to shoot the shit with my teammates, or flirt.
Jesus Christ, was I broken?
If that fucking woman had killed my mood to get laid, she was going to have a far bigger problem than dealing with Coach Sutherland.
I knew Noah was studying, so I didn’t want to talk him into a game of Madden, so I headed to the coffee shop. A fancy coffee with extra syrup might be the sweet thing I needed tonight.
I liked this coffee shop. It was open but also had little nooks that you could avoid people in, if you sat just right. I’d hidden from a few hookups in those nooks. Had a few more because of the nooks.
I placed my order, chatted with the barista about football, then took my giant mug of coffee to a nook.
Of course she’d be sitting here on a night I decided I wasn’t looking for anything.
She looked up from her laptop, and her expression mirrored my own. Surprise mixed with suspicion.
“Why?” It was out before I caught it. I owned it. “Why are you here?” I asked as I sat down in the little nook, with Hadley at the next table. I didn’t care if I was too close. This was where I wanted to sit; she could deal with it.
Or leave.
I really hoped it was the latter.
“I’m relaxing.” Her voice sounded like the exact opposite of someone who was relaxed. She gave my coffee mug the side-eye. “Think you have enough?”
She had a half-empty bottle of water on her table.
“You’re in here using the free Wi-Fi, and all you bought was a bottle of water?” I guessed.
The look would have killed weaker men.
“There’s a seminar I’m waiting to go to.” She flicked her ponytail off her shoulder. “I have my own Wi-Fi at home.”
I didn’t hide my smile at getting a reaction from her, and I knew she saw it.
“Ugh, go somewhere else,” she muttered, but there was no heat to it.
I sat back and took a drink. I heard her snigger.
“Sugary?”
I took another drink, better. “That first hit packs a punch.”
Neither of us said anything, and I felt the tension in my shoulders ease.
“Your coach is a dick.”
It came from nowhere. No provocation. Just a flat statement. I didn’t take the bait. “College football is a competitive sport.”
I felt her glance at me and then back at her laptop. “You’re not defending him.”
“Did you say something that needed to be defended?” I countered.
“So you think he’s a dick too?”
I took another drink. Definitely too sweet. “Did I say that?”
“You didn’t not say it.”
I put the mug down. “Is that your interpretation?”
“I think—” She stopped when I turned my head to look at her. She licked her bottom lip, unsure. “Forget it.”
“Done.”
The silence crept around us again. I wasn’t buying it for a second, but I was in now. I refused to be the first one to leave.
Hadley stopped typing, her attention back on me. “Do you enjoy football?”
“I do.”
I gave her nothing more, and she was clearly expecting it. “Huh. Mike has more enthusiasm,” she murmured as if that was going to provoke me.
“I’m sure he’d love to demonstrate that enthusiasm with you.” I took another drink, hiding my smile because I knew she was pissed at the innuendo.
“Not everyone is a dick like you.”
I gave an insolent shrug. “I know I’m not like everyone else, kind of you to notice.”
“I wasn’t complimenting you, Slater.”
I pretended to think about it. “It sounded like a compliment.”
“How?” She closed the laptop, her attention fully on me now.
“You said not everyone had a dick like you.”
Her mouth dropped in surprise at my misunderstanding.
“I didn’t even mention your dick!”
Two girls rounded the corner and stopped dead at Hadley’s outburst, looking between us both in surprise, one lingering on me a little longer with a look of speculation.
“You really should,” I replied to Hadley while giving the curious one a wink.
“Are you flirting with her right now?”
The girls fled, thinking they’d walked in on a domestic dispute, and I couldn’t hold back my laughter.
“Chill the fuck out, Peterson, you’re too easy to mess with.” I drank my coffee.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she opened her laptop with a flourish and hammered angrily at the keys. Fucking with her was more fun than I thought.
“So you think about my dick a lot?” I asked quietly after a few minutes of listening to the sound of ‘death to keyboard.’
“I feel sorry for you.”
“Don’t. I’m not.” I drained the rest of my drink, leaning back into the chair, and I pulled my foot up to rest on my knee as I watched her.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining bright, her lips slightly parted.
She looked good enough to mess up, good enough to enjoy doing it too.
A phrase flickered in my head, something that would be whispered in the dark when she was on her knees, taking my cock the way I chose to give it to her.
I pulled that thought back, but not quick enough; I saw her register my interest.
And I saw her reach the wrong conclusion.
“I knew who you were in the bar.”
I nodded, noting the slightly spiteful way she said it. Did she think telling me she targeted me on purpose would surprise me?
I brushed it off. “Most people do.”
It worked — her temper was rising. “Your ego is, truly, truly off-putting.”
I stood up, picked up my empty mug, and leaned down over her, appreciating the way she moved back, futilely trying to put distance between us.
“Peterson, you need to be a better liar for the career you’re chasing.”
Her light brown eyes glared at me in defiance. “I can lie when I need to.”
I leaned closer, and she didn’t move back. Our lips were closer. “Good, remember that. You’re going to need it.”
She opened her mouth to ask what I meant, I was sure of it. I straightened before she could.
“Enjoy your seminar, Peterson.”
I didn’t look back, but I did leave thinking the coffee shop was exactly what I’d needed tonight. Now I could go home, relax, and play some Madden.
Because I’d proven one thing this evening — Hadley Peterson did not rattle me.
Or maybe she wasn’t the only good liar in the room.